Day 0: Reason for The Bowling Ball Diet

The Bowling Ball Diet:

Tomorrow it will be 200 days until my new child will be born. I'm hoping for a little boy! Scott weighs 295 lbs. My present to my new child is to loose 45 lbs by the time she is born. That is 6.5 months, or about 42 weeks. A little over a pound a week. Why the "bowling ball diet"? I will focus on 15 lbs at a time, not the whole 45. 15 pounds is a bowling ball on average, or 3 for 45 lbs. Just to make it clear how heavy I am, I should weight 185 for my frame at 6'2". That is 110 overweight! Or a little over 7 bowling balls. Now, just imagine...carrying 7 bowling balls with you every where you go! That's a lot of bowling balls. Wish me luck!

I got the idea from business management tools and from putting. Yes...golf. A pro showed me that the best way to make a long put was to look at it as a series of short puts in a row. The first two feet of the put drive the rest of the distance. When you are looking at having to lose 110 lbs, it looks impossible. Every diet I've ever been on has just added more weight.

So we're going to make a change. The first goal is 15 lbs. That is doable. Especially when you are 110 lbs over, at 295 lbs. That is a scrawny 5%. Not bad. We can do that. So what I'm going to do is focus on the one bowling ball. 15 lbs, and no more. Once it is gone, we'll go after another bowling ball.

I'm not really going on a diet. It is a behavior change plan. What I'm going to do is to influence my behavior and modify it. I'm going to identify the behaviors that are bad for me and that cause me to gain weight. Then replace them with good behaviors that sustain my long term goal of good health.

This won't be easy...but I plan to raise my children and grow old with my wife.